MCCTC students restore Idora Park turtle
"This is a piece of Youngstown history," said instructor Joe Sander.
CANFIELD, Ohio - You never know what kind of project will show up at MCCTC's Auto Collision and Repair class, but this one caught everyone off-guard.
"I had no clue what it was," said MCCTC student Nick Tomasko.
"I never seen this thing before," said Odilio Gonzalez. "It's big and weird."
What it is, is part of the turtle ride from Idora Park. Jim Amey, who owns the Idora Park Experience museum, found it in pretty rough shape in Hinckley, Ohio, but it's just by chance that it ended up at MCCTC.
"They had a garage sale," said Joe Sander, who teaches the Auto Collision and Repair class at MCCTC. "I seen a van, an old dodge van sitting in the back and I thought, 'Boy I'd love to bring that to the school and work on it with the kids.' So I went in there, we started talking. Next thing you know, he didn't sell me the van and he introduced me to the Idora Park Experience."
"I said, well check this turtle out. He looked and the turtle and he was kind of bitten by it. He said, 'Hey that'd be a cool project for us'," said Amey.
Much of the shop for Sander's class still features more traditional cars, but the differences between working on something like that and the Idora Park turtle aren't as big as you might think.
"The ride came to us with rust holes, dents. Same thing with a car. Car has rust, carnival ride had rust. So we repair it basically exactly the same way," said Sander.
"We made some major modifications. When we first got it, it was pretty much destroyed," said Tyler Harris.
"We did the inside, the outside, we welded underneath for the base. We did bondo work on it as you can see," said Tomasko.
Body-wise, the metal is a lot like what you'd see in a car from the 1960's, so fixing rust spots from that era is probably something they'd have to do sooner or later anyway.
"When they leave here, the students are going to be beginners in this field, so they need to know how to do rust repair. The old timers send that work to the new guys," said Sander.
But with this particular project, the students also get a built-in history lesson.
"We spent a lot of time doing a little bit of research on the history of the park. The kids started to understand a little bit. It's more than just some scrap piece of metal," said Sander. "This is a piece of Youngstown history."
"Just like you'll have your older cars, it's a piece of history," said Caleb Shipley.
One that's coming back to life, thanks to a unique learning experience bringing together this community's past with its future.
Their goal is to get it done by April, just in time for opening weekend at the museum in May.
Jim actually has a second turtle on loan to his museum, so if all goes as planned with this one these guys might team up again down the road.
